


We're All Pretenders

by allonsysilvertongue



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Song fic, adele is killing me one song at a time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 01:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5271416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsysilvertongue/pseuds/allonsysilvertongue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Effie squeezed her eyes shut and pretended that they were someplace else, someplace safe, someplace where they belonged with each other and their world wasn’t breaking apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're All Pretenders

**Author's Note:**

> There are no movie spoilers. This is the result of me listening to Adele’s 25 on repeat and All I Ask struck a chord. (a few songs in there reminded me of Effie, so you probably get another soon.). I wrote Hello previously and now I wrote All I Ask (go listen!)

_I will leave my heart at the door, I won't say a word_

_They've all been said before, you know, so why don't we just play pretend_   
_Like we're not scared of what is coming next or scared of having nothing left._

Contrary to what people liked to believe, Effie Trinket wasn’t stupid.

She saw what nobody wanted her to see and what nobody wanted her to know but she played the Games just as well, keeping quiet and not giving anything up; a smile when it was expected of her, a laugh to dispel the nervousness. Her mask was in placed but the cracks were showing.

Something was about to happen. The air was charged and the country was tensed. It bled into her and she was afraid, so very afraid.

She looked at him with dark circles under his eyes, burdened by the promise he made to each kid, and she bit her tongue.  _What’s going on, Haymitch?_  The question died in her throat.

He was different with her this year.

He took his time

He mapped her skin as if committing it all to memory, as if… They won’t see each other again.

Haymitch had long stopped being just another distraction for her – she had fallen a long time ago – and she wondered if she had stopped being an outlet for him, too.

There was so much she wanted to say to him but the fact of the matter was that it would not change anything between them and this wasn’t the time to. She suspected he knew. She thought he might have been awake that one time when she uttered the word she never said to anyone before, foolishly thinking that he was asleep.  _I love you,_  she tested it on her tongue, foreign but so right,  _I love you._

She wouldn’t say it again. It might send him running, not something she needed especially when he was where she wanted him to be right now.

When he moved inside of her, Effie squeezed her eyes shut and pretended that they were someplace else, someplace safe, someplace where they belonged with each other and their world wasn’t breaking apart.

She was good at that, pretending.

_Look, don't get me wrong,  
I know there is no tomorrow, all I ask is_

_If this is my last night with you_   
_Hold me like I'm more than just a friend_   
_Give me a memory I can use_   
_Take me by the hand while we do what lovers do_   
_It matters how this ends cause what if I never love again?_

 

“Tomorrow, perhaps, I will wear that lingerie that you love me in,” her eyes twinkled as she laid her head on the pillow, trying to catch her breath.

Her heart was hammering in her chest, not because Haymitch had brought her to great heights but because something was different with him. The air was heavy and sombre, and she was trying to dispel it with a joke, something light, a tease about lingerie.

“Tomorrow…” he muttered under his breath.

His hand ghosted over her ribcage. He leaned forward, offering her a half-hearted smile and kissed the corner of her mouth. “The red one,” he tried but it failed only because she knew him and she knew his heart wasn’t in it.

Her breath hitched and her world spun around her. It had come to this. Whatever Haymitch had been planning and keeping from her, it had culminated to this very moment.

_There might not even be a tomorrow._

Her gaze flew at him and when he looked at her steadily.  _This is my last night with him._

"Will you stay with me tonight?" she asked the question she never dared to ask before.

His eyes darted to the clock but she was already straddling him, kissing him deeply.

"I need to remember tonight. Give me a memory to hold on to."

His movements were hesitant as he watched her wary and cautious.

"You will be gone tomorrow," she leaned forward to whisper it in his ear. "I will be taken."

He blinked, startled before his face became impassive again and he flopped down on his back.

"You 'll be safe," he murmured, running a finger down her spine and making her shudder. "You know nothing. You’ll be safe here."

"I know  _something_  and I'm too involved with you, with Katniss and with Peeta. Guilty by association," she laughed bitterly. "They will take me but… I’m afraid, Haymitch. For me, for you and for our kids. Tell me, will it be worth it?”

“Yes.”

She inhaled deeply. “Then it's okay," she brushed his hair back, trying so hard to be brave. "I can be  _their_ distraction. They’ll think I know important things – that you’ll be foolish enough to tell me but I don’t and your secrets will still be safe. They can focus their attention on me so you and Katniss -"

"I never wanted to put you in danger."

"I know," she kissed his brow. "I know. Please," she whispered, "pretend you are in love with me. Hold me like you would hold someone you love."

“Effie…”

"It matters to me how this night ends. It matters to me a lot. I need this because what if I die in there? I can’t have the chance to love - "

She gasped when he flipped them over, exchanging their position and he silenced her.

That night, she saw a glimpse of what it was like to be loved by him.

 _I don't need your honesty, it's already in your eyes_  
 _And I'm sure my eyes, they speak for me._  
 _No one knows me like you do and since you're the only one that matters_  
 _Tell me who do I run to?_  
  
For a long while, all they did was to stare at each other when he opened his door to see her standing there with a bag at her feet.

“Haymitch,” she shivered.

It had been a long time since she was this close to him. She wrung her hands together, a habit she had only recently developed. She tried to school her features not to look so pitiful, so desperate but her eyes always gave her away and the pretence was futile the moment she looked at him.

"I don't know where else to go," she whispered. Her voice scraped against her throat, begging him to understand because she couldn’t pretend anymore. That was the game she played before, one she wasn’t keen on doing now. “I’ve been going from one place to another, and I don’t fit anywhere in the Capitol. I feel like I’ve been running and it all… leads to you. You’re the only one….”

“You should have come sooner. I was waiting but I didn’t know if you wanted to see  – “ he broke off but stepped back to let her in. “You don’t have to run anymore.”

_Let this be our lesson in love._   
_Let this be the way we remember us._   
  


Her nightmares were brutal and terrible. She woke him up on bad nights with her screams and on good nights when she couldn’t bear to be alone, she woke up him when his bed creaked and dipped as she slipped in.

“Was it enough? The memory I gave you?" he asked, running his finger through the hair.

"Yes," she nodded, staring up at his ceiling. The warmth of his body radiating next to her and his burning touch on her skin reminded her that she was safe and that she was with Haymitch.

"It was enough to get me by. I think about you on the worst days, it helps like a chilling balm on a scalded wound,” she said and he blinked. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. How could he when he didn’t know how much he meant to her.

“You can’t leave me again,” she whispered. “I don’t want a memory of another last night. I want… I want…”

"I know," he tugged her closer and gathered her in his arms. "I know."

_Does he?_

It was weeks, months, maybe years – she wasn’t keeping count - before he finally told her the truth.

She was curled against him on the bed, shivering and shaking from a particularly bad nightmare when he kissed her temple, held her close and made her feel safe.

"I wasn't pretending that night."

She tilted her head up to search his eyes. He didn’t have to say it. It was right there flickering in his dark grey eyes.

He was holding her exactly how she had begged him to hold her the night the arena exploded.

_Hold me like you would hold someone you love._

She smiled and burrowed herself further against.

This was how she would remember them, buried beneath layers of covers as the storm raged outside while she battled her nightmares inside and him admitting in his own way how he felt.

There was no need for her to pretend she was happy anymore.


End file.
